On Tuesday I rode the biggest waves of my life. I had taken a boogie board and fins to Pipeline, having been there the day before with my son and his friends.
I like to ride a boogie board at Pipeline because the take off is more make-able and less terrifying. I'm pretty good at medium to small sized Pipeline. I'm no big wave guy.
Anyway, on Tuesday, Pipeline was flat, even though there was a huge swell. I decided to go back to a spot near Waimea Bay called Leftovers that looked good when I passed it on the way to Pipeline. Leftovers looked perfect, like some teenager's surf magazine fantasy. I have surfed it many times, usually on a longboard. I had never gone out when it was this big, though. There's a nice safe channel that made it seem OK to go out. For the first hour I stayed inside and caught many good waves, but I kept seeing these monster outside sets that looked really good. Big, but not bone-crushing. I started to move out and catch some of these. The rides were long and fun and I got in a kind of zen mindset, totally in the moment. All my usual brain activity was silenced. The sun was setting brightly, there was almost no wind, no sound, just those huge waves and me.
Oh, and 20 other guys. But they were mostly riding the second half of the waves on the inside. Where I was taking off the rides lasted forever, and I went blasting through most of the inside crowdat the speed of sound.
I would have liked my surfboard, but the boogie board was all I had. This was kind of good because I could duck big whitewater well and go for some late take-offs. It also magnifies the experience to be down at the water level. The speed feels faster and the waves look bigger. I tried to estimate how big the waves were. Probably in the old way of measuring the backs of waves, it was between 6 and 10 feet, with bigger sets. The faces were looking much taller than 15 feet to me. Some were pushing 20 foot faces, maybe, but they were feathering and breaking very gradually, even gently, if such a word can apply to beasts that big.
Eventually I became the guy the farthest out, looking for the biggest of the biggest sets. This is not my normal thing. I'm no Dave Kalama. The big sets just looked really inviting to me. A huge monster started to blot out the horizon. I felt no fear, but I did start to paddle even farther out to see. It looked as if it would close out the whole channel, but I had a feeling it wouldn't. Half way up the face, which might have been more than 20 feet, I turned and caught the thing. I could see the whole crowd scrambling in a panic inside as I races towards them. It felt like it lasted over a minute. I was swerving left and right in big graceful arcs, smiling at all the panicking surfers diving for their lives as this thing rumbled through. I made all the inner sections and rode nearly to the beach without the whitewater ever catching me.
It was certainly the biggest and best wave I have ever caught. I guess even at the ripe old age of 43, my best surfing might not be behind me.
Here's a web site I found that describes Leftovers. On Tuesday it was much better than usual, due to the strange swell direction:
http://www.surfguidehawaii.com/leftovers.htm
Jim
http://www.familysmart.blogspot.com/
http://myspace.com/jimsmartsongs
